


burning

by casdoms (moffwithhishead)



Series: season 10 codas [16]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Anxiety Disorder, Canon Compliant, Demon Dean, Dissociation, M/M, Mentions of hell, Past Child Abuse, Past Torture, Post-Season/Series 10 Finale, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-16
Updated: 2015-06-16
Packaged: 2018-04-04 17:29:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4146438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moffwithhishead/pseuds/casdoms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The air is definitely getting thinner, definitely disappearing and Dean wonders, briefly, where he’ll go when he dies, because clearly he’s dying.</p><p>Clearly this is it for him, a heart attack in the hallway of the bunker.</p><p>Maybe the Mark isn’t really gone, or maybe the spell Rowena did left some sort of fucked up hoodoo behind and he’s lost his marbles now too. Maybe his wall is gone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	burning

**Author's Note:**

> dean has PTSD. period, end of discussion. just as sam and cas do. but for whatever reason, instead of writing the fluffy things I have saved in my drafts folder, my brain decided to do this. because season 10 and season 9 were really, really hard for dean mentally, emotionally and physically. and now he doesn't have the Mark and he's just _dean_ again. and he doesn't handle things emotionally. he pushes them down until he can't anymore and then it just implodes. and because I can relate to that very, very well, I wanted to explore it. the show unfortunately can't and won't give us that, so here I am, taking it upon myself to make me (and you guys) sad but also to explore dean's headspace and what goes on with him.
> 
> I feel like if I were to detail every single thing that is mentioned, even briefly in this, it would take up so many tags. so **warnings** : john, alastair, demon!dean from "dream a little dream of me" all make appearances. hallucinations. mentions the library scene in 10.22. heavy reference to Hell and Alastair. as with many flashbacks or attacks (or whatever you want to call them), dean experiences dissociation with where he is and what's real. dean accidentally injures himself.
> 
>  
> 
> **this was hard for me to write and if you have PTSD, please take caution in reading this.**

_"it might look like just one block_  
_but the whole inside of me_  
_is burning._

_some parts of me are sick with anger_  
_and some parts of me are just sick._  
_i can’t breathe for all the smoke in my lungs._

_do you ever start crying about one thing_  
_and then everything comes up?_  
_every bad thing that ever happened to you?_  
_every injustice?_

 

* * *

 

 

He breaks, just like he knew he would, three days after they get home.

The Darkness is out there lurking, swallowing everything whole and just - waiting. A literal dark cloud hanging over the whole world, reminding Dean that this is his fault. This evil existing in the world again is  _his_  fault.

If he’s being honest, he never thought that they could get the Mark off. He had hoped, sure, of course - but he never truly believed it.

Their life doesn’t exactly afford that kind of luxury.

You find the cheat code for one thing, you’ve gotta give something else up. You save Sammy, you go to Hell. You find Cas, he stays in purgatory because you failed. You save Sammy, you lose mom.

You get the Mark of Cain? You get eternal damnation, apparently. 

Dean always has a weight on his shoulders. Every weight.  _The_  Weight. The same one Atlas carried.

Some days it feels bigger than that. 

Three days. He makes it three days once they’re home after being engulfed by The Darkness and Death’s, well... death. 

He’s walking down the hallway when he remembers.

Remembers the things he did, the ones he hurt. Remembers Cas’ barely conscious, bloody face staring up at him. Remembers the dreams he had, the ones that stopped being nightmares a long, long time ago. Remembers how good it felt to kill something, someone. 

Remembers.

His knees give out under the weight of it, the weight of his nightmares come to life.

Before Hell, before the apocalypse and all - all of that. Dean met himself. He met a demon. He met the twisted, bloodied and burned version of himself that haunted his nightmares for  _years_. 

In Hell, if it wasn’t Alastair torturing him, it was Him. The demon.

The hallway suddenly feels hotter and he swears he can hear the screams again, swears he can feel his limbs being strung up just to be torn off later.

“ _You failed, sweetheart_ ,” a familiar voice hisses in the back of his head, makes Dean clamp his arms over his ears.

He shakes his head, feels his body start rocking a little and oh, that’s new, he’s on the ground. His knees are drawn up to his chest and his head is resting against his knees and yes, this is new, this is not a position he remembers being in a minute ago. 

His heart feels like it’s going to beat out of his chest and his mind won’t  _shut up,_  won’t stop going, won’t stop replaying everything. 

Every thought he had about killing Sam, every thought he had about killing Cas. Every scenario the Mark could imagine for destroying him, bit by bit. 

“ _Look at you_ ,” John’s voice chimes in somewhere to his left and Dean just wants it to stop, he just wants it to stop.

“ _Weak. Pathetic. Crying like a little girl, like a little bitch, because you’re scared_.”

Dean can see him, can remember this fight like the back of his hand. 

John grabbing him by the scruff of his neck and lifting him off the floor with a growl, “ _Your mother would be disgusted by this. Is that what you want, Dean? Is that what you want? To disappoint your mother? To disappoint me?_ ” John leaning next to his ear and hissing, “ _To be a little bitch?_ ” 

He’d been 11.

The air is definitely getting thinner, definitely disappearing and Dean wonders, briefly, where he’ll go when he dies, because clearly he’s dying.

Clearly this is it for him, a heart attack in the hallway of the bunker.

Maybe the Mark isn’t really gone, or maybe the spell Rowena did left some sort of fucked up hoodoo behind and he’s lost his marbles now too. Maybe his wall is gone.

HIs hands tighten where they’re grabbing his thighs and he feels the skin break at at least one point, maybe two. 

His stomach lurches at the smell, remembers how the Mark liked the smell of blood. How  _he_  liked it. Remembers it all, remembers everything he’s tried to bury.

Dean can feel the wall behind him because his head keeps hitting it and that’s fine, that’s okay, it hurts and it’s keeping him grounded.

John, Alastair, Cain, the Mark, Him - they’re not real.

They’re not standing in the hallway, they’re not attacking him, they’re not telling him what an absolute utter fucking failure he is for being  _human_. 

“Dean?” 

The new voice sounds far away, farther than even the voices from Hell, and Dean wants to curl in himself just so he can disappear.

Maybe if he doesn’t exist, maybe if the voices don’t know where he is, they’ll go away. Maybe maybe maybe maybe - right? 

“ _Dean_.” 

The voice is more insistent this time and oh, okay, there’s a hand on his shoulder.

That’s new.

“Dean, open your eyes,” the voice tells him as another hand settles on his shoulder. “Please.” 

They open on their own and he sees the floor of the bunker, he sees the bacon socks on his feet, he sees the sensible boots in front of him. They’re attached to Cas, like always.

Cas. Cas is safe.

“Dean,” Cas’ voice is calm, even-keeled. He sounds sure of himself, like he knows what he’s doing. “You’re alright,” he promises him, “You’re safe.” 

He feels his head move more than he makes the conscious decision to shake it and he has to squeeze his eyes closed again to stop himself from lashing out.  _Don’t touch me, don’t touch me, don’t touch me, don’t touch me_.

“Okay,” Cas’s voice goes soothing, and his hands move off of Dean’s shoulders slowly, “I won’t touch you.” 

He’s not sure how Cas knows what’s happening but he’s completely sure he doesn’t want to know how Cas knows, doesn’t want to know anything. 

“Dean.” 

The other voices are still there, still taunting, but now he can feel Cas’ body heat radiating from him. He can feel the hard ground that he’s sitting on, the hard concrete walls he’s been hitting his head on and the chill in the air from the air conditioning being on high.

He’d been so hot the whole time he had the Mark, so hot, so sweaty; everything felt like it was one hundred degrees, like it was burning him from the inside out. 

The thought brings up Hell again and Alastair steps to the forefront, and Dean can see him, can see him standing right over Cas with that grin. The grin that said today was going to be bad, today he was going to  _break him_. 

“Dean!” 

Cas’ slightly panicked voice snaps him out of it for a moment and he blinks dazedly up at his best friend, “Wha...” 

“Here,” Cas hands him something and pulls Dean’s fist closed tightly around it. “Keep a tight hold on this, Dean, okay?” 

His voice sounds a little softer, not as far away, but he can see the others lurking in the background, waiting for a chance to jump in and remind him what a failure he is. 

“What year is it?” 

The question makes Dean blink at him, his brain trying to process and sort out everything that’s happening, “It’s...”

He hates this part. He’s always hated this part.

He knows what year it is; he knows that he knows it, but it’s  _so hard_. It’s so hard to be reliving ten different periods of your life at once, being haunted by all of them, and trying to pick out which one is happening now. For real. 

“2015,” his brain eventually supplies but he doesn’t sound sure of it.

“Good,” Cas lets out a quiet breath and smiles encouragingly at Dean. “Do you know where you are?” 

The chemicals in his body are starting to crash and he can feel a headache the size of Texas coming on as he groans and shakes his head. 

“We’re at home,” Cas explains gently, a hand cautiously resting on his arm to ground him. “We’re in the bunker. Sam went out about an hour ago to scout the roads out of here... try to find a safe way to get food.” 

Oh.

He has a vague memory of Sam asking to borrow the Impala. He said no, though. He’s not sure why.

“But,” Dean mumbles without taking his eyes off of his shaking hands, “That’s...”

He feels something trickle down his face and Dean tries to look up to figure out what it is but it hurts too much and he whimpers before ducking his head again.

“I’m going to touch your forehead now, Dean,” Cas murmurs reassuringly and brushes a piece of hair out of the way. “Oh.” 

His voice sounds surprised, maybe a little sad.

“Oh, Dean...” Castiel sighs and heals the small gash as carefully as he can. 

That helps a little bit, helps his head hurt less, but he still feels like there’s a couple fishbowls on his head. Everything is so muffled - sound, feeling, smells, tastes - that it’s hard to tell what’s real and what isn’t. 

Cas’ doesn’t move his hand away though and that’s nice, and Dean finds himself leaning into the palm of Cas’ hand.

These hands have destroyed and killed but Dean suspects they’ve built and cured and done more good than bad.

He feels a thumb brush over his cheek gently, wiping away a tear. 

“Dean,” Cas murmurs quietly, clearly trying not to scare him off, “Where is it?”

Considering he’s still not entirely sure that this is real and that he’s safe, he’s fairly quick at answering the question.

“Bedroom drawer,” he hears himself mumble but it feels like it’s someone else’s tired, broken voice. “Behind the, uh...” His hands gesture lamely, barely lifting off his lap. He’s  _so_  tired. 

Because he’s Cas and he understands, he always understands, he just nods and gets up without saying anything.

As soon as he’s gone, one single innocent thought sends Dean down the rabbit hole again and  _god_  he’s so tired, he’s so fucking tired. This rarely happens anymore, though it’s happened more since he got the Mark, but he’s  _so_  tired. 

He covers his ears with his hands again and mumbles to himself, “It’s not real, they’re not real, it’s fine, I’m safe, I’m home, Cas will be right back...” 

He almost jumps when he feels Cas’ hand on his shoulder and he looks up with wide eyes, slightly terrified, only to be met with a kind smile and a glass of water with the medicine. 

Dean snatches both of them clumsily and swallows the pill dry. 

When he’d been with Lisa, she’d sent him to a therapist. PTSD, severe anxiety, an undiagnosed mood disorder - there’d been a list. He’d burnt the list.

The medicine though - he’s tried to keep some around for when it gets really, really bad because it helps. He hates to admit it but it helps when he’s like this, when he can’t tell down from up. It helps to have something that makes his brain shut the hell up for a while. 

He lets his head thud back against the wall as his eyes close.

Cas sits down next to him this time, close enough so that he can feel the body heat but without them having to touch. Dean resists the urge to lean into it as he tries to slow down his breathing.

He should be mortified and who knows, maybe tomorrow he will be, maybe tomorrow he won’t be able to look Cas in the eye or look in the mirror. Maybe tonight he’ll close himself off from Cas and Sam and lock himself in his room until it stops feeling like the weight of the world is sitting on his chest. 

But right now? Right now he’s  _so_  tired.

So he lets himself lean into Cas and rest his head on his best friend’s shoulder, his eyes never opening. He lets himself touch Cas in a way that made him nauseous an hour ago, the guilt of his sins too much for him, because he needs someone. He  _needs_. 

Maybe Sam was right. Maybe he  _is_  selfish. 

Cas moves an arm protectively around Dean’s back and presses a gentle kiss to the top of his head because he gets it.

He understands that he’s needed, not for his mojo or what he is, but for what he means to Dean. He understands that tomorrow, or in a few hours maybe, Dean will feel so guilty about letting himself do this that it will make him sick.

He gets that right now Dean’s scared and he feels like he’s drowning, or maybe like he just came up from drowning and he’s suddenly got all this air back in his lungs and he can’t stop shaking. He gets that today, he was Dean’s life guard.

Sometimes you just need someone who makes you feel safe.

“I’m sorry,” Dean croaks eventually, his voice sounding broken and so, so tired. Like a man who’s seen a thousand battlefields and walked off of every single one.

Castiel knows that saying ‘it’s okay’ won’t help either one of them so he just presses another kiss to the top of Dean’s head.

After a moment he helps Dean to his feet with a small smile, “Come on.” 

Dean sniffles and wipes his face off with his free hand, “Where are we going?”

“You’re tired,” Cas shrugs a little bit, “You need sleep.”

“Oh,” he sounds surprised but nods and lets Cas lead him down the hall.

He manages to get himself out of his jeans and into PJ pants without help but he almost trips in the process, so Cas gently helps him get onto the bed.

In a normal circumstance, Dean would feel ridiculous.

But this isn’t normal and Cas being here, feeling his touch no matter how fleeting or impersonal it may be right now, is grounding him in reality. 

Once the covers are pulled up, it doesn’t take too long before his eyes start to close.

“Rest.” 

He hears Castiel murmur it from somewhere on the other side of the room and Dean makes a sleepy noise as he starts to feel himself slip under.

“You’re safe.”

 

* * *

 

_i feel it in my knees when i stand_

_(the weight of everything counting on me,_  
_like the whole fucking world is watching,_  
_like everything i do here counts for something),_

_so i just keep standing_."

\- [Trista Mateer](http://tristamateer.com/post/117721643474/it-might-look-like-just-one-block-but-the-whole)

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr: meardmish
> 
> both the quote at the top and bottom of the story are halves of trista mateer's poem.


End file.
